ICC – KNOM Radio Missionhttp://www.knom.org/wp
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323259285469As U.S. Outlines Arctic Council Goals, Native Groups and State Lawmakers Left Wantinghttp://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2014/11/03/as-us-outlines-arctic-council-goals-native-groups-and-state-lawmakers-left-wanting/
Mon, 03 Nov 2014 20:18:43 +0000http://www.knom.org/wp/?p=12682As the U.S. outlines priorities for its time as chair of the international Arctic Council, some Alaska Native groups say there's not enough focus on indigenous rights, while state lawmakers call for a greater emphasis on jobs. ]]>http://www.knom.org/wp-audio/2014/11/2014-11-03-Arcitc-Council-priorities.mp3

The State Department has outlined the nation’s top priorities as the U.S. prepares to chair the international Arctic Council in April, but some Alaska Native groups and state officials argue the national goals are lacking.

In Yellowknife, Canada, in late October representatives of the U.S. Department of State gave a presentation closed to media—but directed at the other seven nations on the Arctic Council, as well as several observer nations—outlining the U.S. government’s three key “thematic areas” as the country prepares for its two-year term as Arctic Council chair.

Robert Papp, who retired as U.S. Coast Guard Admiral in May and was appointed by Secretary of State John Kerry as the nation’s special representative for the Arctic in July, discussed those themes at the Arctic Circle 2014 meeting in Iceland last week. Papp said one of the three “themes” the U.S. would focus on includes climate change.

“Reducing black carbon emissions and methane emissions are worthy goals that we need to work on with the international community to achieve,” Papp told the multinational crowd assembled in Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavík. “I see this as a particular area in which our Arctic Council observer nations can become involved, and assist in some of those forward leaning and actionable outcomes.”

Papp also stressed that stewardship of the Arctic Ocean, including a focus on ocean acidification, would be part of the U.S. emphasis. He stressed better preparation for a maritime disaster or oil spill, especially as a former mariner with the Coast Guard, is an especially high priority.

“We need to be working together, just not coming to agreements on search and rescue and oil [spill] prevention,” Papp continued, “but implementing actionable items, and practicing together, and learning from each other so that we can assist each other when those emergencies inevitably occur.”

Beyond climate change and Arctic Ocean issues, the U.S. chair is also focusing on improving the “economic and living conditions” of Arctic residents, including renewable energy, sanitation and public health, suicide prevention, and telecommunications.

But for groups like the Inuit Circumpolar Council, an international body representing more than 150-thousand Inuit peoples across the world, the priorities lack focus on the rights of the North’s first peoples.

“I think it’s been very clear for quite some time that when it comes to indigenous rights, both the U.S. and the State of Alaska have been very hesitant to open up that discussion,” said Jim Stotts, the president of ICC Alaska.

Stotts said the three broad themes the U.S. is advocating aren’t a surprise, and he stressed ICC agrees they are important, but Stotts said issues like self-determination for native peoples, along with hunting and fishing rights, that are absent.

“ICC has been promoting, for some time, to have a project at the Arctic Council that would look at food security from the perspective of the Arctic’s indigenous peoples,” Stotts said. “In particular, the safety of the food, the access to the food, and the health of the environment … As of yet, it hasn’t really been addressed, [and] the food security is one that we wished would have been addressed.”

Stotts said those conversations will continue on the local and national level, if not at the international Arctic Council.

The state’s own Arctic Policy Commission also criticized the national priorities. Last month Anchorage Senator Lesil McGuire and Bethel Representative Bob Herron wrote an open letter to Papp, saying the national priorities must do more to emphasize job creation in rural Arctic communities. That’s an imperative the state’s two top Arctic commissioners say is lost with the fed’s more general economic focus.

“We are very concerned that our number one priority, jobs and economic opportunity for Arctic residents, is being ignored,” McGuire and Herron wrote. “We believe that jobs and economic development for the people that actually live in the Arctic is a high priority and not an afterthought for Alaskans.”

The two state lawmakers are urging the State Department to create an advisory committee from Alaska, made up of local government and Alaska Native representatives, to ensure the two years the U.S. will spend as as chair of the Arctic Council reflects the priorities of America’s only Arctic state.

A version of this story appeared online that miscounted the number of seats on the Arctic Council, as well as incorrectly reported the length of chair terms. The above story reflects corrections to both errors.

]]>12682ICC Wraps Up in Inuvik After Days of Arctic Discussionshttp://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2014/07/25/icc-wraps-up-in-inuvik-after-days-of-arctic-discussions/
Sat, 26 Jul 2014 00:00:29 +0000http://www.knom.org/wp/?p=10785Indigenous leaders from across the Arctic are concluding four days of speeches, meetings, and celebrations, part of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference that takes place every four years.]]>http://www.knom.org/wp-audio/2014/07/2014-07-25-ICC-Wraps-Up-Inuvik.mp3

Indigenous leaders from across the Arctic are concluding four days of speeches, meetings, and celebrations, part of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference that takes place every four years.

Delegations from Canada, Russia, Greenland, and Alaska convened in Inuvik, Canada, a town about 3,600–roughly the same size as Nome. A hotel barge was docked to help accommodate all the visitors.

Jimmy Stotts is president of ICC’s Alaska delegation, and has been active within the organization for decades. He said Inuvik is dramatically different since the last time it hosted the conference, back in 1992.

“We met in the old school, that’s gone now, we’re meeting in the new school. A lot of new homes. So there’s been a lot of physical change. But I would also say the regional organization here, and the organizations here in town have grown, are much more professional and much more established. It seems they’re doing a much better job at taking care of themselves.”

Nome’s Vera Metcalf is another of Alaska’s leaders at ICC, and said the topics dealt with reflect the common issues impacting communities across the Arctic.

“Climate change, erosion, loss of language, health—we have a lot in common in the Arctic, Arctic indigenous peoples,” Metcalfe said by phone from Inuvik during a lunch break as the conference wound to a close.

Those topics, discussed by experts and advocates from across the world, are too broad to be solved at any one conference. The point, Stotts says, is to take advantage of an opportunity to guide leaders and policymakers for when they return home.

“One of the paradigm shifts that needs to happen is to view things from a more holistic way and realize that all these things are connected rather than compartmentalizing them and looking at resource development independent from subsistence, independent from climate change, which often happens,” explained Stotts.

At the conference’s close Thursday, the delegates voted on a new version of the Kittigaryuit declaration. That document lays out the approach indigenous groups want pursued on policies affecting topics like resource development.

“The people most directly affected—which is our people—need to be part of the process from the beginning to the end,” Stotts said of the declaration’s general guidance. “Because of the potential negative impacts of some development, our people are facing a disproportionate amount of risk in case something is to go wrong. That indicates to us that any development that happens in our territory, there should be some benefit, some positive benefit to our people.”

The conference coincides with the Circumpolar Northern Games, which continue until Sunday in Inuvik. Some of the games are identical to ones played in Alaska. Others, like goose plucking and tea-making races, are a bit more specific to the host country.

The ICC also announced that their next general assembly meeting in 2018 will be hosted in Barrow, Alaska.